Showtime presents first look at 'Ray Donovan' & 'Masters of Sex'

With "Boardwalk Empire," "Tremé" and "The Walking Dead" all done for 2012, the Sunday night cable drama field is all Showtime's for the next few weeks. The pay cable channel will try to take advantage of that by using Sunday's episodes of "Dexter" and "Homeland" to run a first-look trailer (which is already available online; see below) for its two new 2013 drama offerings: "Masters of Sex" and "Ray Donovan."

"Masters of Sex," with a pilot directed by John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love"), is a period piece starring Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan as legendary sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson. "Ray Donovan," meanwhile, stars Liev Schreiber as an L.A. fixer of problems for the rich and famous, but (because it's what Fienberg likes to call a Vocational Irony Narrative) not for his own family, which includes Jon Voight as his ex-con father.

Neither show has an official premiere date yet, but "Ray Donovan" will be coming first ("Masters of Sex" doesn't even start production until January), which no doubt means why it takes up 2/3 of the trailer. Showtime gave critics a more extended look at "Masters of Sex" at the summer press tour, and this version doesn't really capture how funny it seemed.

Lots of interesting actors, at a minimum. Looking forward to seeing full pilots.

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

In the trailer for "Masters..."I was turned off (no pun intended!) by the woman stating that women only get guys to orgasm quickly so that they can get back to whatever it was they were doing.That kind of sexist narrative turns me off (again, no pun intended!). I like to see women shown more realistically, i.e. they can enjoy sex for the same reasons a man can. But I really liked the Ray Donavan trailer...although a little concerned that Angelina Jolie's father is going to be "the ultimate evil guy that can never be killed!". We'll see!!

@Kro Lin: I know what you mean, but here's my positive spin on that scene and I hope I'm right: given the time period of the material (I'm assumming late 1950's) I think the point was that because men were so clueless about pleasing women in bed, and because it wasn't socially acceptable for women to tell men what they wanted (because that would make them a "whore"*), many women just found the act tedious, and for good reason. I would like to think that is the sort of thing this show will be exploring.

Masters of Sex looks like it could be fun and it's good to see Lizzy Caplan as a lead again after Party Down.Ray Donovan could go either way. It looks kind of generic, but I'm a fan of Liev Schreiber when he's given good material to work with so hopefully this provides.

Jesse - I believe Showtime is paneling "Ray Donovan" at the January TCAs because it's going to be premiering before the next TCAs in July. "Masters of Sex" isn't paneling. I know nothing specific beyond that...